The embodiments described herein relate generally to gaming chairs and, more particularly, to gaming chairs that enhance the player experience and personalization.
At least some known gaming chairs are simple portable stools that are positioned in front of gaming machines (e.g., slot machines). A player may sit on the stool while playing the game. While such stools effectively serve the purpose of permitting the player to sit while playing a gaming machine, such stools are not necessarily comfortable and do not draw a player towards playing the particular game.
More recently, gaming machine chairs have been introduced for particular slot machine games. Such chairs include multiple speakers, and audio signals are generated that result in the audio being emitted from the speakers in a surround sound format. More specifically, and with respect to at least one known chair, while the player is playing a game on the gaming machine (i.e., the gaming machine executes a game application), the audio signals generated by the machine are transmitted from the gaming machine to the chair speaker for output while at the same time, audio signals are also transmitted to the gaming machine speakers. Such known gaming chair and gaming machine configurations are “stand-alone” type arrangements in that the gaming machine itself controls generation of the audio signals and there is typically no personalization of such audio for the particular player.
Moreover, at least some known gaming chairs include still displays along a surface, such as a rear surface, of the gaming chair. A still image on such a display may, for example, be related to a product advertisement or a game advertisement. As with the audio, such displays are not personalized for a particular player.
Furthermore, at least some known gaming chairs include a player interface for a player to control game play of a gaming machine. For example, at least some known gaming chairs include a joystick, a trackball, or a connector for receiving player commands from a player-provided input device. With known “stand-alone” machine, the player inputs and corresponding game play are not personalized for the particular player and the gaming machine simply executes the stored software in response to such player inputs, and communicates game results and data in preprogrammed format via the gaming machine display.